Another lecture, some research and more animation.

Today we had another lecture, a bit unusual week but we are having presentations on Tuesday and show and tell on Wednesday in the following one so the schedule was changed to make sure we got all the lectures.

Today's lecture was about the emotional and thinking side of a character. A lot on facial-expressions and how and when to use them.
We learned that there are seven basic emotions according to Paul Ekman, and these are:

- Happy
- Sad (pain)
- Surprise
- Fear
- Anger
- Disgust
- Contempt

But after some more research I found some additional ones:

"in the 1990s Ekman expanded his list of basic emotions, including a range of positive and negative emotions not all of which are encoded in facial muscles. The newly included emotions are:
Amusement
Contempt
Contentment
Embarrassment
Excitement
Guilt
Pride in achievement
Relief
Satisfaction
Sensory pleasure
Shame".


I know one shouldn't trust wikipedia too much, but interesting non the less.


Here is a very useful video I found on the subject:



We also talked a bit about micro-expressions. And these are expressions that we show for instance when we are lying.
Say for instance a person is angry about something. This person could put on a fake smile and pretend to be happy, but without knowing it his/her face will for a brief moment show a micro-expression that shows how they actually feel.
I have seen a tv-series that is based on this called "Lie to me", and it's really useful as a reference source.

Here's a promo for it:




So, back to my animation. I've tried t work in some more facial-expressions in the piece and also worked more on the timing on the actual lip sync. But the biggest change is in the body. I found that the body was both floaty and moving about to much, so I've worked in holds and got rid of one of the turns to calm it down. I'm trying to get the sense of him being both worried and thoughtful and therefore thought that more subtle body-movement was the better choice for this piece.
I also tried to work on the eyes, so I read up on eye-darts (which we learned about in yesterday's lecture) and tried to implement this in the animation. Also in the reference (for the lipsync - posted earlier) you can see my eyes moving slightly, but fast from left to right - almost "scanning the situation" he is in. I have been struggling a lot with the eyes on this so I needed to do some additional reference on that as well. Here is a short clip that I recorded of my eyes moving to help me along:




And here is the animation as it looks at the moment:



Posted this preview in MA-character group on Facebook as well, so hoping for some feedback on it.

But now; Time for bed!